Atmanirbhar Bharat Not A Closed Economy, It's Global: NITI Aayog V-C

The Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative is not a closed economy but it's being globally competitive, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Rajiv Kumar said on Tuesday as he stressed the need for building trust between the private investor, the government, the academia and the civil society.

Self-reliance is not the same thing as self-sufficiency, he said about the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative at the 12th Foundation Day Lecture virtually on the topic "Atmanirbhar Bharat: Challenges in Imple­mentation” organised by ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education, deemed to-be University.

“It (Atmanirbhar Bharat) does not in any sense mean a closed economy. Self-reliance is not the same thing as self-sufficiency and we need to be quite clear in our minds that what we mean by atmanirbhar (self-reliant) is a globally competitive economy and getting integrated even more with the global trends and ‘Make in India for the World,” he said.

“Self-reliance in my view is increasing our share in global flows of merchandise and services trade. I think it's time that we give ourselves the ambitious target of quadrupling our share in the next 20 years in the global trade of merchandise and services,” Kumar said, adding: “We need to ensure that our share in global flows of technology and finance also increases as we go forward. That is when we will become atmanirbhar.”

Kumar said the economic aspect of being self-reliant would be by ensuring that at least by 2047 (when India celebrates its centenary of independence) our per capita incomes are at least equal to the global per capita income of today or may be even of that time.

He said the NITI Aayog is working with individual States to ensure that compliance burden on the private sector gets reduced.

(PTI)